According to a study recently published by German IT Business Association BITKOM, roughly 40 percent of surveyed companies are planning to migrate away from traditional phone systems to Voice over IP (VoIP). What many companies are not fully aware of is that the use of a unified messaging solution can entail significant disadvantages especially for fax communication as in some cases it simply cannot be supported. By using fax services from the cloud, however, companies can bridge this gap without problems.
Additional communication channel for Skype for Business
With Skype for Business (previously known as Lync), Microsoft offers a comprehensive unified communications platform for phone calls, video conferencing and collaboration. Microsoft is not offering any fax functionality of its own at this time. Yet fax is and remains an essential means of communication for many companies, which they cannot abandon as a result of the changeover. This means that companies have to rely on the services of additional partners to implement their digital strategies. Retarus’ globally available cloud fax services enable companies to continue receiving faxes reliably – also in an IP environment. This even applies in cases such as Skype for Business, where no support is offered for fax via the SIP Trunk.
Fax integration: From email client to business application
After connecting to Retarus, incoming faxes are forwarded directly via an upstream media gateway or over the telephone system (PBX) to the cloud service. According to the chosen configuration, the fax documents can then be sent from the cloud service to the responsible employee, for instance as an email attachment. Alternatively, the fax can be forwarded to business applications for automated processing – via FTP, HTTP, SMTP or a web service. It is also possible to forward incoming faxes to available multifunction devices (MFD). There is no need to change existing fax or extension numbers.
In addition to receiving faxes, you can also send documents directly via Retarus’ scalable cloud infrastructure. With a positive impact on performance: The carrier connections are always dimensioned to ensure that the optimum bandwidth is available and that capacity bottlenecks are prevented, no matter how large the volumes that need to be transmitted.
You can find out more about Retarus’ comprehensive range of Messaging Services and the integration of fax communication into Skype for Business by clicking here or directly from your local Retarus contact person.
